My throat hurts.  In fact, I've got a problem with my face and my throat.   Throat... is burning and it's hard to see.  Difficult to focus. It’s like looking through the glass block privacy wall in my shower stall. It’s distorted… but I can see blurry figures moving about in the distance and colored lights flashing. 

I don’t understand what is happening, but it would help if I could see.

I instinctively try to rub my eyes to bring things more clearly into focus, but I cannot do it. I cannot move my hand. In fact I can’t move either of my arms.  As I shift my head downward to examine myself, I feel raw burning pain under my jaw and my chin.  As I moan uncomfortably, an understanding of my situation comes rushing back to me.

My arms are stretched out in front of me, and they are frozen solid against the hard, wet ice. The upper part of my body is the only portion that I’d been able to pull out of the frigid water after I’d fallen through the ice.  The rest of my torso and my legs are still in the water.  The original panicked thrashing-about that I had done when I first fell through, had sapped most of my strength and my body heat.  Oddly enough, I don’t think my head ever went under.  The unbelievable shock of the cold water had made it hard to think clearly at the time.

(I wonder what shock feels like?  If you are really in shock, how do you know it? Maybe it's like being insane.  If you're insane you don't know it.  If you know it... you're probably not insane.)   

When I came to my senses and calmed myself, I’d had the presence of mind to at least work my way back toward the entry point where I’d fallen in.  Sure enough, that area of ice was thick enough to keep from cracking further, but I simply did not have the strength to pull my water-logged and almost frozen body out of the water. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid!  I’d been cross country skiing.  I have loved cross country ski trails under newly fallen snow since I was a child.  I know I should not have been skiing alone, but I’d been looking forward to this for so long.  My sister’s new place here in Northwest Wisconsin promised picturesque wooded trails, unfettered scenic views, and long peaceful hours of contemplation on my skis.   Skis and ski poles that were now surely lost beneath the ice.  (Funny… that I am worried about my ski equipment, when I can no longer feel my legs or my feet.)  I guess I wandered off the trail.

It occurs to me that I had been shivering and convulsing violently while I was calling for help… but I am no longer shivering now.  I wonder if that’s a good thing.  How much time do I have before hypothermia sets in?  How much time had I been in the water?  I must have lost consciousness for awhile and then  something awakened me. 

Why can’t I see?  

It then becomes clear to me... (well, perhaps not really clear) that my eyes and eye lashes are partly frozen, and that I am trying to see through ice crystals on my eye lashes.   It feels odd and uncomfortable to try to blink.  I keep trying but I am unsuccessful.  I can only see a large growing orange blur in front of me.  

The voices are becoming a little clearer now as I clear my head.  Voices are yelling at me to reach for the ladder.  I try to answer, but it comes out as a painful croak.  I don’t think I will do that again.   I try to see this ladder that they are telling me about, but I can’t see it.  I can’t move… at all.  

Another genius (on a bull horn?) is telling me to kick my legs.  He wants me to try and get as outstretched and flat across the top of the water as possible, so that I can pull myself out.  (Really?  I desperately want someone to kick his ass for me.   If I could kick my legs like that... would I still be dangling like a wedge of lemon in this ice bath?  And who put a damned lake in the middle of a ski trail anyway?  Don’t they know that someone could fall in?)  This strikes me as funny…. But I don’t want to laugh or my throat will hurt again.  The laughter will sound like a croak … again. Better not to croak just now.    

Then my head tips forward again so that my face falls forward against the ice again.  My chin burns again, but not as much this time.    

Things happen fast after that.         

A large bright orange blurry shadow  looms over me.  I feel pressure on my arms and shoulders, and there is tugging and pulling.  Things hurt again but the pain is now a throbbing pain and less specific. Someone pulls me up and onto a sled and then we are sliding quickly across the ice.  

I have been unceremoniously dumped onto a sled while they whisk me away from the frosty puddle I"d fallen into. I am now face down on a sled of some sort and I can read the word “Bentley” stamped onto the bright orange catamaran-style polyethylene pontoon.  “Big words for a dead man,” I think to myself.  This also strikes me as funny… but I don’t know why.  I’m really tired.

A loud noise wakes me and now I am shivering again… and far more violently then before. (Is that a helicopter?)  There are lots of people moving around.  Someone hovering over me is moving his mouth.  (Turn off the helicopter so I can hear you.  Where is your bullhorn?)  I want to grin but my face hurts.  

I am being handled and covered and lifted and pushed around.  Things hurt now that didn’t hurt before. (I vaguely remember a joke about a man whose pecker fell off after falling through the ice.  Actually, that was probably the punch line and it didn’t seem so funny just now anyway.)   Someone new is now trying to push a straw between my lips, but he only succeeds at poking me painfully.  (I’ve gotta remember to kick his ass later as well.  I need to make a list.)  The people that are yelling at me are the bringers of this pain… so I don’t think I will answer them just now.   

This is all just too funny and my laughter comes out as a painful croak.